


A Meta Dive into Vulcan Philosophy, Culture, and Lifestyle

by streitkartoffel



Category: Star Trek
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 04:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20687732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streitkartoffel/pseuds/streitkartoffel
Summary: I keep finding bits of information and speculation on Vulcan philosophy, culture, and living scattered across the internet. Of course, I have my own thoughts on all of this, as well. I've decided to collect it all here. If nothing else, this can serve as one of many fic writing resources available on this site. Please do post your (civil!) disagreements and debates in the comments. I'm always eager to hear from anyone who happens to stumble across my work, and I adore comparing thoughts on philosophy.





	A Meta Dive into Vulcan Philosophy, Culture, and Lifestyle

**Author's Note:**

> Notes TL;DR: Chapter titles are important, I am not a professional, and my writing style is different here.
> 
> A note on chapter structure - Each chapter is related to a different snippet from the internet (with links or screenshots), from the various available books (sources will also be made available with version and page number, and if possible, I will include JPEG scans of the pages in question), or simply my own exploration of a concept mentioned in canon (again, sources will be quoted, with episode name, number, and scene description as much as is possible). They are in no particular order. Chapter titles should serve as the most basic of directories. 
> 
> A note on this work in general - This is a labor of love and pure enjoyment of Star Trek's Vulcans. I am not an expert, merely a fan. In my real life, I follow a modernized version of the stoic philosophy, which may very well influence my views on Vulcan philosophy. 
> 
> And finally, a note on my manner of speech - in my fics, I tend to change my writing style to be more easily readable by the largest variation of people possible. In this writing, I'll be using my natural style, because I feel it better fits the subject matter. My natural style tends towards formality, and I know I often sound distant in my natural writing. It takes a lot of effort to change my style, so I've given it up for this piece. I will write as though I were talking to you directly so that I may express myself more whole-heartedly and without the reservations that my fictional style ensures.

Thread [link](https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/vulcan-philosophy.67113/)

In post #1, user Hippokrene is looking for information on Vulcan Philosophy, and mentions two specific points:

  1. “we know that Vulcans are vegetarians that don’t touch their food, but we’re never told why”
  2. “We’re told that Vulcans attempt to ‘be logical’ but that’s about as useful a philosophy as ‘be nice*.’”

To supplement the second point, user indolover (post #27) says: “One thing I've never understood about the Vulcans is that logic is subjective. People use logic for different ends.”

Hippokrene mentions that they’re looking for specific reasons given in canon for such things, but I think they can both be extrapolated from given canon information.

I believe Vulcans adhere to a vegetarian lifestyle for two reasons. One is the Surakian principle of nonviolence (Can you return to life what you kill? Then be slow to take a life.) Second, Vulcans are _touch telepaths_. Even Vulcans didn’t have long-distance weapons from the time of their race’s birth. So, at some point, Vulcans would have had to hunt and kill with their hands and sharp sticks and thrown rocks. I imagine the sensation of feeling a creature’s death through the hands you are using to kill it might be a bit overwhelming. Pre-Surakian Vulcans probably did and ate whatever they needed to survive, but with the introduction of logic and structure into early Vulcan civilization, there was no longer a _need_ to kill to survive, and no longer a need to feel the death of their food. Modern humans who have gone to meat farms and killed their own food (yes, you can do this) sometimes come out of the experience with a sudden will to become vegetarian. The forced empathy of telepathic contact would likely only encourage disgust with the entire idea of killing another being for food, especially when there are other, nonviolent, humane options for acquiring the nutrients necessary to survive. 

Though with the invention of replicators, it would be possible for Vulcans to eat meat without having to kill anything, it’s likely that over the centuries, vegetarianism has become so imbedded in Vulcan culture that through generations of vegetarian eating, the taste for meat and possibly the ability to fully process it has been effectively bred out of Vulcan genetics. Have you ever seen a vegetarian who decides to just eat a burger? I have. To be polite about it, the reaction of their GI tract is quite… violent.

On not touching their food, I agree with the general consensus of “sensitive hands”. I’ve seen it played out in various fics that Vulcans do not touch their food because their hands are somewhat (all the way up to very, depending on the fic) sensitive due to their use in telepathy. In the first season of TOS, Spock is somewhat more touchy-feely than you might expect of a telepathic race, but that declines as the writers hammer out exactly what “Vulcan” means. For the purposes of canon-accurate fic, his early “betrayal” of Vulcan attitudes can be excused as Spock trying to fit in with the human crew until he realizes Kirk, as captain, will allow him his strict Vulcan privacy.

On the second point, I think “Be logical” can be excused as a human interpretation of a culture they don’t fully understand. Humans tend to simplify things as much as possible to make them easy to understand by the largest possible audience. Be logical, as a motto, works for Vulcans because they are often heard speaking of logic. It’s likely that the concept said to be logic doesn’t fully translate to Federation Standard, and therefore loses some meaning. The human concept of logic doesn’t seem to encompass all the ideas that Surakian logic does. So, in short, I think it’s a mistranslation. By now, we’ve all heard of the French l’appel du vide, or “the call of the void”, which refers to the subconscious urge to jump off tall places. Imagine trying to explain that to someone who has never felt it. How do you explain that urge to jump when you don’t actually want to? You can’t, not entirely. You can explain what causes it (our brains running a bug check), and that you don’t actually desire death, but you can’t fully explain that feeling to someone who hasn’t felt it. In fact, there’s a possibility some of you reading this are staring at your screens wondering if I’m fucking insane (only partially) and thinking “WHY would you want to jump off a cliff but also not want to jump?” To you, I suggest trying to describe color to a blind person as a fitting analogy. We can’t describe it because the only words for that phenomenon exist in French. Coming back around to Vuhlkansu, I think Vulcans cannot fully explain what they mean by “logic” because the words don’t exist in Federation Standard.

* * *

I’m just going to post a giant chunk of user Timo’s reply (post #12 in the thread) here because they posited some very astute observations and ideas that bear consideration, and I think they could be true in conjunction with what I’ve already mentioned.

“The Surakian disdain of flesh-eating we might attribute to simple respect for complex forms of life, although perhaps in a hierarchal manner somewhat more logical than the simplistic concept of all death=bad, all life=good.  
We could also argue that there are seeds for conflict in both agriculture and hunting in a desert environment. In agriculture, limited arable land would bring conflicts to a point - but in hunting, going after limited prey would mean actively moving into and through the territory of thy neighbor, armed, and in a manner not unlike a military expedition. Hunting and its consequences and connotations might thus be something Surakians would wish to erase from Vulcan tradition, as a measure that aids in accepting Surakian pacifism.  
A closed-cycle economy and ecology with limited resources and possibilities for mobility would also be excellent breeding grounds for isolationism and xenophobia. Vulcans would just take a more intellectual tack at this than their Romulan brethren.  
A society of isolated villages would require inter-village interaction to be biologically viable, though. Thus, carefully regulated mating and breeding would be natural consequences. Indeed, the telepathic need to go mate with a specific individual, possibly beyond high mountains, rather than one's closest cousin, could be an evolutionary adaptation rather than just a cultural quirk; the entire Vulcan telepathy might stem from this vital "distant heat" sense.  
OTOH [on the other hand], not touching one's food would be simple pragmatic logic - the hygienic use of chopsticks rather than fingers has often been quoted as an important factor in how the Chinese were able to effortlessly outbreed the medieval Europeans and defeat infant mortality limitations. And Vulcans would have a keen interest in cutting down on infant mortality, if they can only breed every seventh year...”

* * *

User T’Girl, in post #25, writes: “It might be more accurate for a Vulcan to think emotion is dangerous. If I ever let go of the tight rein of control that I maintain over my emotions and myself on a second by second basis, I could easily harm the people around me. Emotion is dangerous.”

This makes sense only if Vulcans believe that all emotions of any strength can cause violence. Humans generally hold that all emotions _in their extremes_ can cause a person to do violence. Rage, ecstatic joy (with aid of carelessness), and apathy can all be rationalizations for doing violence, but they are not the causes of it. The singular cause of violence is undeniably the choice to do violence upon another. I think Vulcans are more wary of the damage extreme emotions can do to themselves. If you have ever lost a loved one or had an incredibly stressful experience (perhaps being evacuated for a fire or flood), you may have experienced emotional exhaustion – the point at which emotions and stress become so mentally overwhelming that you become physically exhausted. Due to what we have heard about Vulcans experiencing emotions “more deeply” than humans, I believe emotional control is a main tenant of Vulcan philosophy because of the constant risk of emotional exhaustion they would face.


End file.
